Tag: Leicester City

It was one of Danny Baker’s finest moments as host of 6.06, showcasing his ability to view life from a tangent that had never even occurred to his callers.

“We’re going down, Danny…” wailed the voice at the other end of the line.

“So?”

“Whaddya mean, so?! We’ve been relegated.”

“So what?” replied Baker. “You’re good enough to come straight back up; you spend a year seeing grounds you’ve never seen before and you pay a whole lot less to watch your football.”

There was a stunned silence. Were the presenter to proffer similar consolation nowadays, he would probably be met with howls of derision, for even I have occasionally swallowed the notion that the gulf between Premier League and The Rest has become so great, that relegation is equivalent to being banished from Heaven to Hades.

That notion has been given a thorough airing in this dreadful week for common decency, with those minded to excuse the sacking of Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri, 298 days after he delivered a sporting miracle, well aware that they needed to do some fast talking.

So their argument went this way: behind the mists of sentiment lurks an unforgiving precipice over which Leicester City is in grave danger of toppling to its doom, and while mists eventually clear, precipices are going nowhere.

Perhaps because of their desperation to shore up this argument as it ploughed on against the tide, we’ve had to entertain an old obscenity these last few days. Yes, with apologies to Aleppo and a crumbling NHS, the D-word is back in professional sport…

“…obviously they’ve felt that, unless they made a change, there was every chance they would drop out – which would been amazing after winning the title last year. It would be a disaster.” – TalkSport

“I think going down would be a disaster for Leicester and I suppose the board have made a very brave decision” – Leicester Mercury

“…it will be up to the likes of Vardy and Riyad Mahrez…who will have to desperately improve their form if they are to avoid such a disaster.” – GiveMeSport

“It’s a campaign that still possesses the likely possibility of ending in unthinkable disaster.” – The Linc

“They look like they might go down. It’d be a disaster for them if they were relegated.” – Reddit

Interesting view of the word ‘disaster’. They were using it a lot in relation to Tyneside this time last year, if I remember correctly, yet in the absence of news reports to the contrary, we must assume that the sun continues to rise in Newcastle and the birds continue to sing. Certainly, football continues to be played there, we know this because as I write, Newcastle United have 69 points from 32 games and are first in line for promotion to the Premier League.

No exceptional occurrence this, either. Since the formation of the League, 18 of the 73 teams relegated (four went down in 1995 as league sizes were altered) have returned the following season. Seven more have been back within two seasons, two within three, and three within four. A 41 per cent chance of returning to the top table within half a decade is hardly the stuff of unspeakable tragedy.

So, having despatched the ‘disaster’ myth, let’s dig down to what might have really prompted Ranieri’s dismissal. For this, I believe you have to go back to mid-December last year, when Birmingham City’s owners decided that turning a team on its uppers into one a whisker outside the play-off zone with only modest finances wasn’t good enough, and manager Gary Rowett was shown the door. If a previous hardline stance on his own contractual position meant that Rowett had made enemies at St Andrews, as suggested here, the identity of his replacement, Gianfranco Zola, fuelled an alternative theory for Rowett’s departure.

“Birmingham’s owners want a ‘name’ they can boast about at the yacht club,” fumed radio pundit Danny Kelly, “and Gary Rowett isn’t it.”

If it seemed an odd metaphor for a city more than 100 miles from the sea, everyone familiar with Zola’s underwhelming managerial record knew where Kelly was coming from, and an observation from BBC radio’s Pat Murphy on Ranieri’s demise makes me wonder if we are seeing the same vanity at work once more.

“I remember the Thai owners at the Everton game when Leicester got the trophy, the players couldn’t get the trophy out of their hands. They loved dining at the top table and that’s what they are worried about.”

Are we getting to it now, I wonder – the true nature of the perceived ‘disaster’ that has forced the hands holding the dagger? The prospect of a year or two dealing in just millions instead of billions; of having to make do with mere affluence instead of unimaginable riches, while the folks at the Yacht Club find someone else to talk to?

A fairytale trashed on the altar of ego?

A football-daft friend stared at the floor yesterday, as we discussed Ranieri’s departure, slowly shaking his head.